La Historia Oficial (1985)

November 8, 1985

SCREEN: ARGENTINE LOVE AND LOSS

By WALTER GOODMAN

Published: November 8, 1985

FROM the legacy of anguish left by Argentina's military juntas, Luis Puenzo has created a glowing film. Cogently written and beautifully acted, ''The Official Story,'' opening today at the Paris theater, takes us to the place where politics meets the human heart.

Although the desaparecidos, the thousands of Argentines who were abducted during the juntas' counterinsurgency campaigns of the 1970's, are central to the film, Mr. Puenzo and his co-writer, Aida Bortnik, focus not on the mothers who lost their sons, but on a woman who gained a child. Alicia, a high school history teacher married to a prosperous businessman, comes to believe that the baby her husband brought home five years before may be the daughter of a young couple who were killed by a right-wing death squad.

It is not easy at first to credit that an educated woman of middle years could be quite as oblivious as Alicia to the horrors being committed in her country. ''I always believed what I was told,'' she says. But Norma Aleandro's luminous performance sweeps away the reservations. Although her role sometimes dips into sentimentality, she carries us with her as her awareness is awakened and her conscience touched, especially by an old friend (Chunchuna Villafane), who returns from exile to tell in vivid detail how she was tortured because of her relationship with a radical: ''After seven years, I'm still drowning.''

Alicia's growing suspicions, conveyed by Miss Aleandro with remarkable subtlety, take her inevitably to the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who have been demanding the return of children picked up in military sweeps or born in clandestine prisons. Alicia learns too much, and comes to know her society as she had never imagined it. ''Nothing seems to be true,'' she says.

In sharp glimpses of a high school classroom and a church confessional, of upper-class socializing and international business operations, Mr. Puenzo connects Alicia's search with the irreconcilable divisions that continue to beset their country. The chants of the grandmothers in the central plaza of Buenos Aires - ''Return all children born in captivity'' -seem directed straight at her.

The most memorable scene brings Alicia together with an elderly woman (Chela Ruiz) who believes that Alicia's child, Gaby, may be her grandchild. Miss Ruiz's portrait of the humble, determined grandmother is a wonder. In minutes, with the help of a few much-handled snapshots, she evokes an entire family history and a nation's loss. Pride, joy and despair mingle in the telling. Although in a way competing for Gaby, the two women are united by a profound sympathy that cuts through all distinctions of age and class. In this encounter, the film achieves nobility.

Compelled to question her own good fortune, Alicia sees her husband with clearer eyes. Roberto, grown rich under the juntas, now consorts with generals and foreign businessmen. On a visit to his parents, however, he is treated by his father, an unrepentant anarchist, as an exploiter. It's a long-running argument between them. ''The Spanish Civil War is over, and you lost it!'' Roberto yells at the old man, and for the benefit of his unemployed brother, adds, ''I'm not a loser!'' But even as he utters those words, he has intimations of total loss. Just as his associates are scurrying for safety from investigation, his wife takes to investigating him, badgering him about their child. ''What the hell are you asking me?'' he cries desperately at her mild but insistent questions.

In Hector Alterio's finely shaded performance, Roberto combines power and softness, tenderness toward Alicia and Gaby with ruthlessness toward those he considers losers and troublemakers. His wife may be an innocent, but he knows the world only too well; his face bears the marks of all that he has seen and done in his climb to success; his heavy body holds a potential for violence. The shocking instant when he strikes out brutally at his beloved wife exposes him completely. ''What am I, a torturer?'' he asks; the question is a confession. The couple's poignant final embrace, as Gaby's soft goodnight song comes over the telephone, signals not reconciliation but resignation to their now separate fates.

Beside ''The Official Story,'' most of the political movies of recent years seem tub thumpers and point pounders. Mr. Puenzo's film is unwaveringly committed to human rights, yet it imposes no ideology or doctrine. The further miracle is that this is the 39-year-old director's first feature film. One From the Heart THE OFFICIAL STORY, directed by Luis Puenzo; written (Spanish with English subtitles) by Mr. Puenzo and Aida Bortnick; director of photography, Felix Monti; edited by Juan Carlos Macias; music by Atilio Stampone; produced by Historias Cinematograficas and Progress Communication Corporation; released by Almi Pictures Inc. At the Paris, 4 West 58th Street. Running time: 112 minutes. This film has no rating. RobertoHector Alterio AliciaNorma Aleandro SaraChela Ruiz AnaChunchuna Villafane EnriqueHugo Arana BenitezPatricio Contreras JoseGuillermo Battaglia NataMaria Luisa Robledo GabyAnalia Castro MacciJorge Petraglia GeneralAugusto Larreta Father IsmaelLeal Rey